The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1887-07-13
them as a hunter through the trees gets a

ing that the timid antelope will come up
and eat out of our hand. We are expecting
that the prarie-fowl will light on our
church-steeple. 1t is not their habit If
the Church should wait ten millions Of years
for the world to come in and be saved, it will
wait in vain. The world will not come.
What the Church wants now is to lift their
feet from damask ottomans, and put them in
the stirrups We want a pulpit on wheels.
The Church wants not so much
cushions as it wants saddle-bass and arrows.
We have got to put aside the gown and the
kid gloves and put on the hunting shirt.
We have been fishing so long in the brooks
that run under the shadow of the Church
that the fish know US, and they avoid the
hook and escape as soon as we come to
the bank, while yonder is Upper Saranac and
Big Tupper's Lake, where the first swing of
the Gospel net would break it for the multi
tude of the fishes. There is outside work to
be done. What is that I see in the back
woods? 1t is tent The hunters
have made clearing and camped out.
What do they care if they have
| wet feet, or if they have nothing
| but pine branch for a pillow, or for the
northeast storm! If moose in the darkness
steps into the lake to drink, they hear it right
away. If loon cries in the midnight, they
exposed work. We have got to camp out
and rough it. We are putting all our care
on the seventy thousand people of Brooklyn
who they say come to church. What are
we doing for the seven hundred thousand
that do not come! Have they no souisl Are
they sinless that they need no pardons Are
| there no dead in their houses that they need
no comforts Are they cut off from God, to go
into eternity-no wing to bear them, no light
! 10 cheer them, no welcome to greet them. l
hear to-day surging up from the lower depths
| of Brooklyn grcan that comes through our
! Christian assemblages and through our
| Christian churches; and it blots out all this
scene from my eye today, as by the m!sts OF
J great Niagara, for the dash and the plunge
| of these great torrents of life dropping down
into the fathomless and thun lering abyss of
| suffering and woe. | sometimes think that
lust as God blott,d out the Church Of
| Thyatira and Corinth and Laodicea, because
OF their s.oth and stolidity, He will blot out
American and English Chritianity, and raise
on the ruins stalwart wide-awake, mission
| ary Church, that can take the full meaning
of that command: ''Go into oil the world,
and preach the Gospel to every creature. He
| that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,
and he that believeth not shall be damned"
remark, further, if you want to succeed
| in Gospel hunting you must have courage. II
the hunter stand with trembling hand or
! shoulder that f1inches with fear, instead of
his taking the catamount, the catamount
| lander if, when out hunting for bear, he
should stand shivering with terror on an ice
| berg! What would have become Of Du
| Chaillu and Livingstone in the African
| thicket, with faint heart and week knee!
| When panther comes within twenty PAGES
| Of you, and it has its eye on you, and it has
| squatted for the fearful spring, "Steady
| there"
Courage, o We spiritual hunters! There are
great monsters of iniquity prowling all around
about the community Shall we not in the
strength of God go forth and combat them!
| We not only need more heart but more back
bone. What is the church Of God that it
should fear to look in the eye any transgres-
| sion? There is the Bengal tiger Of drunkenness
| that prowls around, and instead of attacking
| it, how many of us hide under the church
| pew or the communion table? There is so
| much invested in it we are afraid to assault
| it; millions of dollars in barrels, in vats, in
| spigots in corkscrews, in gin palaces with
marble floors and Italian-top tables and
chased ice-coolers, and in the stl ychnine, and
| the logwood, and the tartaric acid, and the
nux vomica, that go to make up our "pure"
American drinks. looked with wondering
eyes on the Heidelberg tun." 1t is the
| great liquor vat of Germany, which is said to
hold eight hundred hogsheads of wine, and
only three times in hundred years has It
been filled But, as I looked at it l
eight hundred hogsheads. Why, our Ameri.
can vat holds four million five hundred thou
sand barrels of strong drinks, and we keep
| three hundred thousand men with nothing to
| do but to see that it is filed" Oh, to attack
| this great monster Of intemperance, and the
! kindred monsters of fraud and uncleanness,
| REQUIRES you to rally all your Chritians
courage. Through the press, through the
pulpit, through the platform, you must as
sauit it. Would to God that all our Ameri-
! can Christians would band together, not for
/ crack Drained fanaticism, but for holy Christ
| inn reform. think it was in 1898 that there
went out from Lucknow, India, under the SOW
ereign, the greatest hunting party thatwas ever
projected There were 10000 armed men in
| that hunting party. There were camels, and
horses, and elephants. On some, princes rode,
! and royal ladies' under exquisite housings,
| and five hundred coolies waited upon the
| train, and the desolate places of India were
| invaded by this excursion, and the rhl-
! noceros, and deer, and elephant, fell
under the stroke of the sabre and bullet.
| After q while the party brought back
| left the wilderness of India ghastly with
| the slain bodies of wild beasts. Would to
| God that instead of here and there a srrag-
| gler going out to fight these great mon
Sters of iniquity to our country, the
million membership Of our churches would
| band together and hew in twain these great
| crimes that make the land frightful with
their roar, and are fattening upon the bodies
and souls of immortal men. Who is ready
| for such a party as that!' Who WILL be
| mighty hunter for the Lord
remark again. II you want to be success
| full in spiritual hunting, you need not only
| to bring down the game, but bring it in.
think one of the most beautiful pictures OF
| Thorwaldsen is his Autumn" 1t repre-
sents sportsman coming home and standing
under a grapevine. He has staff over his
shoulder and on the other end Of that
staff are hung rabbit and brace Of birds
Every hunter brings home the game. No one
would think of bringing down a reindeer or
whipping up stream for trout, and letting
them lie in the woods. At eventide the camp
is adorned with the treasures OF the forest
beakyand fin, and antler.
II YOU go out to hunt for immortal souls,
not only bring them down under the arrow
of the Gospel, but bring them into the Church
of God the grand home and encampment we
have pitched this side he Skies Fetch them
in, do not let them lie out in the open field:
They need onr prayers, and sympathies, and
help. That is the meaning OF the. Church OF
God-help. Oh We hunters for the Lord! not
only bring down the game, but bring it In.
IF Mithridates liked hunting so we'll that
| for seven years he never went indoors, what
enthusiasm ought we to have who are hunt
ing for immortal souls. If Domitian practiced
archery until he could stand boy down in
the Roman amphitheatre, with hand out
| the fingers outStretchei, and then the King
could shoot an arrow between the fingers